


Only If For A Night

by Draco_sollicitus



Category: Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: Angst, Canon Divergence AU, F/M, Forbidden Love, Hidden Relationship, Jedi Rey, NRDF Pilot Poe, Pining, Rey Solo, Secret Affair, Smut
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-03
Updated: 2020-03-03
Packaged: 2021-02-28 02:40:51
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,481
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22996354
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Draco_sollicitus/pseuds/Draco_sollicitus
Summary: Poe Dameron knew what he was getting into when he started things with Rey Solo, Jedi Knight and daughter of two war heroes.He thought it wouldn't be long-term. He thought they were just fooling around -- after all, the Jedi can't form attachment.No one falls in love. No one gets hurt.But there's only two problems: Poe did fall in love.And Poeishurt.
Relationships: Poe Dameron/Rey
Comments: 18
Kudos: 125





	Only If For A Night

**Author's Note:**

  * For [BatuuPrincess](https://archiveofourown.org/users/BatuuPrincess/gifts).



> NOTES:  
> Rey is Leia/Han's daughter.  
> Poe is the same age as he is in canon, but Rey is twenty when they meet in 32 ABY (so he's 30, and she's 20, and then in 34 ABY they're 32/22)
> 
> Warnings:  
> SO MUCH ANGST
> 
> Smut here and there in here, but really I feel like angst is the hardest thing to get through. First bout of smut is easy to skip - just stop reading when Poe/Rey agree to keep things casual (rolls eyes) and go to the page break. Then, when they're alone in the bathroom ... smut's going to be pretty impossible to skip.
> 
> Smut smut smut.
> 
> So much angst though - heartbroken Poe is definitely a tag for this.

_ Two Years Ago (32 ABY) _

Rule-breaker.

It had been a title given to Poe Dameron freely since he walked onto a transpo off Yavin 4 and ended up at the Flight Academy. Ten years with the NRDF, and that rule-breaking had come in handy - sure, he followed regulation when and where appropriate (he’d never risk his squadron’s safety, for instance), but Poe had no problem bending or even snapping a rule that would cause a greater loss of life or liberty for others.

He might have gained a reputation for rule-breaking, and it had landed him into some hot water here and there - still, when he was told mid-gala at the reconstructed Senate building on Coruscant that he’d have to work in close quarters with a Jedi diplomat, Poe reacted with surprise.

“Can I ask why you think I need a babysitter, Senator?” Poe asked Leia Organa, his long-time idol (and oft-times crush), who merely arched one eyebrow at him.

“Do you want a list, Captain?”

He ducked his head with a rueful grin. “No, ma’am.” 

“Besides, I think you’ll like her.” Leia smirked and beckoned to someone over his shoulder. 

Poe bit back a sigh and waited to see whatever dour Padawan or Knight he’d be saddled with on his mission to Jakku; the Jedi came up to his left side, and Poe turned to greet her. 

And froze.

The Jedi in question was the most spectacularly beautiful person he’d ever seen: hazel eyes, freckled cheeks and nose, high cheekbones, slender build, as tall as he was, with a clever light in her eyes. Poe tilted his head after a second and some pieces slipped into place.

Realizing what it was, his eyes widened, right as Leia said, “This is my daughter, Rachel.”

“Rey’s fine.” Rachel - no, Rey - held her hand out and Poe took it, already grinning.

It felt like electricity flowed between them: Poe imagined lightning running up his arm. If Rey felt it too, she didn’t say.

“Funny, you don’t look like Ben.” Poe grinned across the ballroom at the sight of the Jedi in question; Ben Solo loomed over everyone around him, scowling down at the punchbowl and clearly lost in thought. “Much cuter. Ow!”

He turned around, shocked, to see Rey and Leia standing shoulder-to-shoulder, twin looks of innocence on their faces. “Which one of you-”

“Which one of us what?” Rey asked serenely.

“Pinched me!” Poe answered, eyes wide.

“I can’t imagine a Jedi Knight would pinch anyone,” Leia said agreeably, waving her hand. “And I certainly don’t move that fast, not anymore.”

“Not since you fell two summers ago. The Senate was  _ very  _ worried about that,” Rey said, nodding solemnly. 

Poe looked back and forth between them.

If Rey was half-Leia Organa, and half-Han Solo ….  _ Gods, was he in for it.  _

“I’ll leave you two to it.” Leia dismissed herself abruptly, walking away towards her twin, who’d just entered the ballroom.

They stood in silence for a moment, Rey’s hands clasped in front of her and her expression a mask of serenity. Poe stared at her for a long second, his side still smarting from where  _ one  _ of the Organa-Solo women had pinched him before he cleared his throat and tried to speak.

When he cleared his throat though, Rey turned her luminous eyes on him and arched her brow in a way disturbingly reminiscent of Leia. “Uhhhhhhh,” was all he managed to eek out.

“Force help us,” Rey said dryly. She tossed her head towards the open-air balcony to their right, clearly uncaring that Poe was flushing bright red. “Walk with me.”

As they walked through the crowds, Rey absolutely invulnerable to all his attempts to get her to smile and get back on the right foot, Poe decided there was a rule - a personal one that he’d upheld for sometime -- he was in danger of breaking:

_ Never let anyone know how hard you’re trying. _

(The rule lay in pieces as Rey finally giggled on the balcony, Poe straddling the railing as he imitated Jabba the Hut reaching for the last piece of cake)

* * *

On Jakku, Poe and Rey bumped into another rule that needed breaking - this rule, not of Poe’s making.

It was a difficult trip where they encountered starving children, a population desperate to survive, and slavery, not by law but by reality, of people trapped in an economic hellhole they couldn’t escape from. Tensions ran high, and Poe saw more emotions from Rey in those days than he ever expected from a Jedi.

After three weeks on Jakku, they were on the ship already in Hyperspace, when the tension reached a boiling point.

“Did you happen to have any more of those ration bars?” Rey asked, digging through a pack. “The ones you liked so much?”

She was referring to the nutrient dense ones that the NRDF loaded him up with, that came in a dozen different flavors, and were tastier than most military-issued foods. Poe looked up from the samples he’d collected for Master Skywalker and shrugged. “Nah. Gave ‘em away.”

“...What?”

Poe felt the back of his neck heat up; he could tell she was staring at him. “Those kids,” he said awkwardly, “The ones that Lor San Tekka takes care of. They were starving, and…” Poe shook his head. “I gave them all the bars.”

“That was enough food for a year,” Rey said, as slowly as him. She stood from her crouch and examined his face with an unreadable expression.

“Yeah, well, they needed it more than me.”

There was a beat of silence, and then Rey crossed to the stash of credit chips he kept on the ship for souvenirs and fun things at ports, money he’d collected from his salary over the last few years. She ripped open the tin and looked inside as Poe protested, “Hey!” but she whirled to him, holding out the empty can. 

“Did you-”

“Yeah.” Poe scuffed his boot on the floor, and Rey stared at him. “I don’t  _ need  _ another Loth-cat figurine, and - and like I said, they needed it a lot more than I did, and-”

“And you just gave everything you had away.”

“I mean,” Poe mumbled, staring at his feet. “Yeah. Seemed. Right?”

He looked up in surprise when he felt Rey draw near him, and he blinked once, wondering why she was looking at him with such a blazing expression; it was  _ his  _ job to stare at  _ her  _ after all, and her job to ignore him.

At least, that had been the pattern they established on Jakku.

“I didn’t know you’d done that,” Rey said, her voice … hoarse, somehow.

“Yeah, well, I didn’t - mean for you to find out?” Poe licked his lower lip and wondered if she was going to hit him. He  _ did  _ give away most of their rations, and if the ship malfunctioned, they’d be trapped. “I’m sorry, really, just-”

Rey kissed him.

A Jedi.

Kissed him.

More importantly,  _ Rey  _ kissed him.

Poe was so shocked he forgot to respond for a solid three seconds, but then he gave it his all, wrapping his hands around her small waist and hauling her in, tilting his head to fix the angle, slotting his mouth against hers as Rey made a small moan of either surprise or lust (or both).

It hit him like lightning, kissing Rey, not the first time he’d felt electrified by her touch, but it flared to an unbearable heat in his gut. 

“Wait,” Poe gasped, pulling away, “Kriff, we shouldn’t do this - we shouldn’t-”

“We shouldn’t,” Rey agreed, her breath hitching. Her cheeks were flushed and her eyes were dazed, but it didn’t stop her from tugging him back in; Poe went all too easily. “Gods, I want to.”

“I thought the Jedi-”

“It’s no attachments,” Rey said, ducking her head slightly. “But-”

“But?” Poe asked, trying to meet her gaze. Rey looked at him with a small smile that didn’t look fully happy.

“There’s - there’s room for physical … connection? Bodies are bodies, after all. It’s attachment that the Jedi forbid.”

“So-” Poe’s gut twisted. “We can do … some of this, but not … all of it?”

“Yes.”

“We can - “  _ fuck,  _ his brain suggested unhelpfully, “But … cuddling and going on dates and … commitment, that’s the no?”

“I guess so,” Rey laughed awkwardly. “It’s all new to me.” That shouldn’t have affected him as much as it did. “But, I - I know I want … more with you. And I know I’m tired of ignoring it.”

So she’d been ignoring the thing Poe had felt, and not Poe himself. That … helped. That definitely helped.

He told himself it did, at least.

“Okay.” Poe tucked some hair behind her ear and kissed her sweetly. “We start there?”

“We start there,” Rey agreed.

They kissed again, deeper this time, and Poe slowly moved forward until Rey’s back hit the side of the ship - he’d never been more thankful for droid-assisted autopilot as he tugged Rey down onto the narrow bunk in the back of the ship, pushing her robes off her shoulders and tugging the leather cords of her belt free with his teeth as she sighed and tangled her fingers in his hair.

One rule broken -  _ don’t kiss Jedi, and definitely don’t sleep with them  _ \- but a thousand more around them, protecting them, keeping them safe.

As he sank inside her minutes later, Rey sighing and clutching his bare shoulders, Poe told himself this didn’t feel like a mistake, that he could make this about sex and sex only and he could focus on how beautiful Rey was, how sweetly she said his name as he buried himself to the hilt in her wetness, how good it felt. 

He told himself that this wouldn’t end in disaster.

(It was just one rule, after all)

* * *

_ Present (34 ABY) _

Poe sighs and ruffles his curls in the mirror of the public ‘fresher. 

He hates parties.

But, the NRDF needs to make its yearly fundraising goal, and at this point, he’s fairly famous for rounding up pirates and protecting refugees in the middle of the Hosnian crisis, and with the looming threat of  _ something  _ on the horizon, he needs to be here, rubbing elbows and mingling and charming everyone. 

He’d rather be flying. Rather be with his squadron. Rather be anywhere else.

It doesn’t help that the  _ one  _ person who could make this better is  _ here,  _ and he can’t talk to her, not without it seeming suspicious. After all, why would a scruffy commander with a rebellious streak a parsec wide ever  _ need  _ to talk to a Jedi Knight who happens to be the daughter of two famous war heroes, one of whom is a literal princess and the First Senator? 

No, better he stick it out and suffer rather than draw unwanted attention. They’ve made it work these past two years by meeting up clandestinely, leaving it up to the Force and never rushing meet-ups (that quickly become hookups). Every three months or so they happen to bump into each other, and then they happen to be able to meet alone, and then they happen to end up in one of their beds, or a hotel room, or a speeder-car, or one time, thrillingly, the Millennium Falcon.

Poe splashes some water on his face and dimly registers the sound of the door opening and closing; grabbing a towel, he pats his face down and looks up into the mirror, freezing when he sees who’s there.

“Rey?” He hisses, turning around to stare at her in shock. “What are you doing-”

Rey slides the lock across the door of the bathroom and walks up to him; she’s wearing a black shirt and pants - highly reminiscent of the holos of her uncle from the day the second Death Star was destroyed -- and her legs look unfairly good in all that leather.

“I-” Poe swallows and eyes the door. “Someone might see.”

“They didn’t,” Rey says with a brazen confidence. “And no one’s in here.”

“No, but-” Poe looks around, “There could be  _ cameras _ -”

“Hmm.” Rey runs her eyes along his form. “I heard you were dating the Senator from Chandrila.”

“The Senator from - Brizo? She’s-” Poe blushes. “We went on a date. One!” He emphasizes hastily at Rey’s dangerously arched eyebrow. “One date, and I took her home after dinner, I swear, it was - people were talking that I didn’t have a girlfriend, and -”

Rey snorts, her eyes oddly flinty. “It’s fine, Commander.”

“It is?”

“Yeah.” Rey tosses her hair back, the way she does when she’s pretending she’s fine and wants to maintain some pride. “We’re not - we’re not together. You can date other people. Monogamy isn’t exactly sustainable with our … situation.”

Poe stares at her. “Don’t do that.”

“Don’t do  _ what _ ?” Rey glares at him, her voice sharp.

“Don’t pretend you’d be fine with me seeing someone else!”

“I  _ am  _ fine with you seeing other people! It’s not like I can ask you to only be with me.”

“You can.” Poe speaks before he can stop himself, and he ends up staring over Rey’s shoulder, mortified but refusing to take it back. 

“What?”

“You can ask,” Poe says again, miserably. “You can ask me to only be with you.” He looks at her at last, and he winces at her shocked expression. “Just ask, Rey. Ask me.”

“That isn’t what we are,” Rey whispers, her expression twisting into sadness briefly before smoothing out to something cool, something controlled, something … Jedi-like. “This is just sex.”

“It’s just--” Poe snorts. “If it’s just sex, why have we been doing this for two years? Why haven't I so much as  _ kissed  _ another person-”

“I haven’t either,” Rey retorts, “We scratch an itch, we-”

“We do a  _ lot  _ more than scratch, Rey-”

He recalls, briefly, a moment eighth months ago when Rey had called him, sobbing - he’d rushed outside to focus on her, and stood in the pouring rain as she poured her guts out about a friend who’d been a fellow Padawan, cut down by a group of Vader acolytes. They’d talked on the comms for three hours, and he’d gotten a cold from standing outside in a storm, and he hadn’t regretted it for a second. 

“We shouldn’t.” Rey shakes her head, jaw set stubbornly. “This is what we are. This is what we have to be.”

Poe considers it, staring over her shoulder again, his gut twisting, untwisting, twisting again.

“Are you - are you not happy with that anymore?” Rey whispers, somewhat folding in on herself. “Because - we can stop. We should stop, if you aren’t happy. It’s not fair to you, it’s not-”

“It is,” Poe says wearily, still staring at the wall. “It is, though. I knew what this would be when we started. Don’t … don’t beat yourself up over it.”

“Easier said than done.” Rey laughs shakily, and his heart twists this time. 

“Hey.” Poe looks back at her, and sees a tear drying on her cheek. He places his hand tenderly on the side of her face and wipes the tear away with his thumb, and lets the digit rub along her cheekbone tenderly, back and forth, briefly catching at the corner of her mouth. Rey takes a staggered breath inward, and Poe leans in, caught in her orbit, permanently. Disastrously.

“Hey. Don’t cry, hey - not over me.” Poe shakes his head, tears of his own threatening to spill over. “Sweetheart.”

“Poe-” Rey gasps out his name and surges in, kissing him almost brutally. “Can we -- I wanted --” She says between biting kisses, and Poe nods, his heart and mind locked in a deadly war (no winners) as his body screams for her. 

“Door’s locked, right?” He murmurs into their next kiss, and when Rey nods, he picks her up by the back of the thighs and more or less hauls her onto the counter.

She’s taller than him like this, and Poe doesn’t care - they tug and pull and push at each other, and Poe eventually gets Rey’s tight pants down, tugging them off her, mumbling an apology to her bare ass on the counter; Rey shivers at the cool durasteel and then pulls him back in for a bruising kiss. She gasps when he sinks to his knees to lick at the inside of her knee. 

“Poe-”

He surges in, his hands kneading her inner thighs, and Rey mewls when he drags her to the edge of the counter so she’s exposed and pink and wet already; he kisses her there long enough to make her bite her fist to hide her scream, and when she’s even wetter, wet enough at last, Poe wastes no time in unfastening his pants and pushing them down enough -- Rey’s small hands tugging at the fabric next to his own hands -- to pull himself free and line up against her.

With one hard push, he’s inside her, and they pant for a long moment, long enough to break his heart eight different ways as they stare into each other’s eyes; Poe squeezes his eyes shut and rests his forehead against hers as they trade breaths, only connected where their foreheads touch, where their hands are entwined, where he’s still hard inside her.

Then, Rey leans back on her elbows, locking her ankles behind him and pulling him in and Poe starts to thrust, toying with her a little to get her worked up, the way she likes -- after a few minutes like that, Rey sits up and wraps her legs around him more, and her arms around his shoulders, holding him tight as she buries her face in his shoulder, and Poe can see himself in the mirror as he thrusts into her, his hands gripping her ass surely hard enough to bruise.

He can’t stop though, not with her gasps like sobs in his ear, not with her so wet and hot and perfect for him, not with Rey needing him as much as he needs her. Poe mouths along her shoulder through her shirt, eventually reaching her neck; he pushes some hair out of the way to kiss below her ear where she’s most sensitive on her neck, and Rey gasps, grinding against him as she trembles for the second time that night.

Poe follows not long after, and they don’t move apart for a minute or two.

Too long, per their normal standards; too long spent gripping each other tight, Poe growing soft inside her; too long doing anything but kissing or fucking or any of the things that are safe for them to do.

Rey pulls away first; she usually does.

“Don’t,” Poe whispers before he can stop himself, but Rey pushes his chest with an ocean of grief in her beautiful eyes, and Poe steps back. His heart shatters as he bends to grab her pants from the ground while Rey slides off the counter, and she wipes at herself with a cursory pass, rinsing her hand in the sink as Poe gives up on cleaning up and just re-fastens his pants.

Rey fixes her hair, ignoring how he’s staring at her in the mirror; out of respect for her wishes, he blinks and looks down before she turns around. No point in making this harder for her.

She grips his hand tightly when she walks past him, and then she’s at the door. Poe sees her hesitate in the mirror, and his heart’s in his throat while he waits for her to say something. As he waits for her to stay.

“Rey?” he asks, hating the hope in his voice.

She tilts her head. Doesn’t turn around. “Coast is clear, Commander,” she says softly, cracking the door open and slipping outside - because she’d been waiting to avoid detection, not waiting for him to beg her to stay.

When Poe emerges five minutes later, his hair is back to its artfully tousled state, and his clothes are neat; his eyes are clear and if they’re a little red, it’s nothing others can’t blame on the drink. His eyes pass over the party-goers, pass over Luke Skywalker, pass over Han Solo, pass over the Jedi gathered in the corner, one of whom has hair that was in a braid an hour ago and is now in waves around her shoulders, her cheeks pinker than one would expect from walking around a party.

Poe doesn’t blink twice at any of the guests, his face impassive even while his heart lies broken on the floor of his chest, his heart that breaks more and more each day. It’s not like tonight is the first time he’s felt like this after all: he’s getting used to it. Getting used to hiding it.

Because in the end, there’s one rule Poe Dameron can’t break, not when the sun is up and his bed and arms are empty:

_ Don’t pretend she can stay.  _

**Author's Note:**

> meep meep meep meep meep
> 
> (sorry)


End file.
